NEW DELHI, NEW DELHI, INDIA, March 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — GOALisB, an MBA admission consultants led by ISB PGP and Stanford LEAD alumna Shruti P, hosted a live virtual panel discussion on 12 March 2026 at 4:30 PM IST featuring two of its most recent IIM Ahmedabad PGPX admits, Siddharth Pamnoor, a petroleum engineer from ONGC, and Piyush Pathak, an officer in the Indian Railway Service of Engineers. Both candidates also hold admits to IIM Calcutta PGPEX. The session, moderated by Shruti P, drew applicants and MBA aspirants from across India’s public sector and government services communities.
The panel covered the complete MBA admission journey for candidates from non-corporate and PSU backgrounds, GMAT preparation, essay development, IIM interview experience, and the specific doubts that government and public sector professionals carry into the application process. The discussion offered one of the most candid first-hand accounts of the IIM Ahmedabad PGPX admission process available to Indian applicants from non-traditional backgrounds.
On the biggest GMAT misconception
One of the panel’s most quoted exchanges centred on the role of the GMAT in the IIM Ahmedabad PGPX admission process. Piyush Pathak, who cleared the Engineering Services Examination before his decade-long career in Indian Railways, described his entry into the MBA application process with the same assumptions that most candidates from competitive examination backgrounds carry.
“That GMAT is everything, that was the biggest misconception,” Pathak said. “Coming from competitive examinations it was always about a benchmark. Then I realised this just gives me entry to write the essay. After that GMAT just doesn’t matter at all. It is perhaps just a nudge and sometimes not even that. What matters is your profile, your essays, how you justify your journey, the depth you have, and the fit you are for them.”
Siddharth Pamnoor, who spent over seven years at ONGC managing critical facilities including a desalter plant in Ahmedabad before his role expanded into team management and operational leadership, added that the value of technical experience from PSU careers is consistently underestimated by applicants themselves. “They value your experience a lot,” Pamnoor said. “Not just management or corporate experience, they also value your technical experience. What they are trying to evaluate is how you approach certain things. That is the one thing they are actually looking at.”
On what MBA really stands for
The panel’s most memorable exchange came when Shruti Parashar asked both candidates to define the full form of MBA in their own terms. Neither said Masters of Business Administration.
Piyush Pathak said: “Management Beyond Administration. Management of self, management of cohort, management of peers, management of family, management of work-life balance and management of administration, of course. It is a total journey of self-learning.”
Siddharth Pamnoor said: “Madness, Belief, and Action. There is a lot of madness, bunching different people in a single room. Belief that we’ll learn and come out better in one year. And action because all of us are driven, acting on our own gut feeling and potential.”
On the application process and the role of authentic storytelling
Both panellists spoke at length about the essay development process with GOALisB and its direct impact on their IIM Ahmedabad PGPX interview performance. Pamnoor described an experience during a mock interview that shifted how he understood his own profile: “You guys said that okay we rate you very highly than you do yourself and that gave me a lot of confidence. It was a very truthful assessment. There were times when you were brutal in your words, but yeah, that helped us a lot.”
Pathak emphasised that the application’s authenticity, rather than its polish, was what determined the interview outcome. “If I had made that application on my own it would have been a robotic sort of application, totally hunky dory sorts, and that is what kills the application. Quality, timely, critical inputs, that is something which is irreplaceable.”
Both candidates confirmed that they received admits to IIM Ahmedabad PGPX and IIM Calcutta PGPEX and that they will be joining IIM Ahmedabad’s one-year residential MBA program.
About the panellists
Siddharth Pamnoor is a petroleum engineer who completed his degree from Pandit Deendayal Energy University and spent over seven years at ONGC, most recently managing critical operational facilities in Ahmedabad before transitioning into a managerial role overseeing teams, logistics, budgets, and audits. He is an IIM Ahmedabad PGPX and IIM Calcutta PGPEX admit and a GOALisB client.
Piyush Pathak is an officer in the Indian Railway Service of Engineers with over eight years of experience across contract management, project management, strategic planning for railway expansion, and public administration including a role as Chief Public Information Officer of the Moradabad Division. He is an IIM Ahmedabad PGPX and IIM Calcutta PGPEX admit and a GOALisB client.
About GOALisB
GOALisB is an MBA admissions consulting practice led by Shruti P, an ISB PGP and Stanford LEAD alumna with over seventeen years of industry experience. The practice works with applicants targeting ISB PGP, ISB PGPpro, ISB PGPMAX, ISB MFAB, IIM Ahmedabad PGPX, IIM Calcutta PGPEX, IIM Indore EPGP, IIM Lucknow IPMX, and global programs including INSEAD, London Business School, Wharton, Chicago Booth, Oxford, Cambridge, NUS Business School, and HEC Paris.
GOALisB’s NarrativeCore methodology is built on a brainstorming-first, authenticity-driven essay development process that has produced 500+ admits across India’s top MBA programs and globally ranked business schools. The practice has 50,000+ YouTube subscribers and an active library of success story interviews, program walkthroughs, and MBA admissions guidance at youtube.com/@goalisb.
Aditi Verma
GOALisB
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